Saturday, August 1, 2009

Many successful people acknowledge the fact that their intuition has always been a guiding force in helping them achieve success. But how does intuition work? Is it that only successful people have intuition? Or is it that people who are intuitive are the ones who succeed? Or is it that people who are able to improve and use their intuition are the ones who succeed? What should we keep in mind if we want to develop intuition?

I think everyone has the power of intuition. But intuition seems to come easily to some people and not to others. Why? The difference is that some of us are able to recognize, understand, and trust our intuition and some of us are not able to do this. Some of us have enough courage to follow the guidance of our intuition whereas some others don’t have it in us. Some of us want more out of life and are willing to go out and try a road not usually traveled whereas some prefer the security and status quo of our present lives. Some of us are able to use our fears to our advantage whereas others, unable to overcome it, remain confined by them.

Developing intuition is a process and it’s not as easy or as difficult as many of us think. But there are certain things that we need to keep in mind, if we want to develop our intuition. Here are a few things that can help you if you want to develop your intuition:

* You need time and patience

If you want to develop your intuition, you need to spend some time doing it and you need patience to develop it. It is not for someone who wants and expects to get quick results. Even if you do get some good results quickly it may either be because the groundwork had already been done or because the results are just a fluke. And if you don’t get quick results, don’t lose heart; continue working to develop your intuition.

* You need to meditate

You may call it meditation. Or you may call it spending some quiet time with yourself. But if you want to develop your intuition, meditation is a wonderful exercise to help you do that. So, spend about 30 minutes of quiet time with yourself. The idea of meditation is to feel completely at peace and be completely calm. Once you are calm and focused, you can introduce an intention such as “I want to be intuitive” or a question such as “What should I do to develop my intuition?” Spend about 5 minutes repeating this intention or question.

* You need to learn about how you feel different emotionsIf you want to develop your intuition, you need to understand your emotions. For the inexperienced, intuitive feelings can often be confused with other emotions. It is therefore, very important that you begin by understanding how you and your body feels when you are scared, angry, happy, worried etc. An intuitive feeling is what is called gut feeling by most of us. Intuition feels differently. But if we don’t know how our other emotions feel to us, we will not always know how intuition feels to us.

* You need to understand your beliefs and how you think

Our emotions and our impressions are often based on personal beliefs and can often come in the way of developing intuition. These beliefs and prejudices are often so deeply ingrained within our minds that we can often misunderstand the feelings that arise from them and consider them as intuition. But the truth is that this feeling is based on your deeply-ingrained beliefs. So, before you attempt to develop your intuition, try and learn about your personal beliefs and prejudices. They can be confused as intuition and can interfere in the process to develop your intuition.

* You need to maintain an intuition journal

It is important that you get in the habit of maintaining an intuition journal while you are trying to develop your intuition. Maintain a journal in which you can write your hunches, insights, or your gut feelings about a person or a situation. You can look back at them at a later point and see whether they were correct. If you were wrong, then it was probably not intuition. If you were correct, try and see what role your intuition played in this. Try to analyze and find out where this feeling came from. Was it just good judgment? This exercise will help you understand the difference between your logical thoughts and your intuitive feelings.

* You need to practice intuition for yourselfOne thing which often people forget while trying to develop intuition is that they are doing it for themselves and not for someone else. Some people want to be intuitive because they want to impress others. This is not what your intuition is for. Your intuition is for helping you and not for showing off to others. Your intuition will not help you much if it is being used for some frivolous purposes. So, make sure that you are clear about your purpose and you don’t use your skills to show off to others.

* You need to develop your knowledge and information

Intuition will not work for you if you don’t have the required knowledge and information about a particular area. If you have no knowledge about developing software for your business, you cannot develop it through intuition. What you need to do here is learn about things that you should look for while choosing a software professional, where you can find one, how much money you will need to spend, etc. Once you have gathered all the information and learnt enough to be able to hire a software professional, intuition can help you. It can help you choose someone you can trust or choose one among equally good candidates. So, learn about your particular situation before using your intuitive abilities in that area.

* You need to follow your intuition with actions

So, you are working at developing your intuition. And you even get some brilliant ideas with its help. But if you don’t follow them up with the correct actions, you will soon lose whatever intuitive skills you have picked up. So, when your intuition says that you should change your career, trust it. Ask more questions about how and why you should change your career. Follow the guidance of your intuition. Make sure to take action when you are working to develop your intuition.

In the road to success, intuition can play a very important role. But make sure that you put in enough work into the process to develop your intuition. This can help you in achieving your goals and get what you want in your life. Once you begin to recognize, trust, and follow your intuitions with the correct actions, there is no one on this earth that can stop you from turning your dreams into reality.